A classical guitarist’s right hand technique is the cornerstone of his playing. Unhappy with mine, I’ve set out on an odyssey to renovate my right hand.

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Sunday, July 1, 2012

A New Posting Schedule

As you might have noticed, there have been no posts for the last two weeks. My apologies for this. I’ve concluded, however, that there’s no point in posting when I’ve nothing new to say. Doing so is an imposition on your time and patience. Further, it waters down whatever useful things I’ve written over the last year and a half.

I am, however, soldiering on. In fact, lately I’m feeling better about my prospects. Over the course of this project, I’ve boiled away some things that don’t work. What’s left is a basic process that needs more time to gel. If things continue to improve, I’ll write up a full report of how I went about it.

Of course, if I don’t improve, then it’s back to the drawing board.

For the rest of this project, I’ll report at the end of each month. This will include a video of whatever I happen to be working on at the time. My goal for the end of July is to post a video of Bach’s Invention 8—at least my half of the guitar duet version I’m playing. Lately I’ve been hitting it pretty reliably at 80. But I want my performance tempo to be no less than 90, so I’m trying to inch it upward.

By the way, it’s interesting how the left hand can sabotage the right. For example, in the following passage, I’ve a left hand shift down the fourth string during a sequence of sixteenth notes:

Often this little shift creates a tiny burst of nervous tension that slows down my right hand. Yet in the following passage, all my shifts are either on an eighth note or take advantage of an open string:

...so this passage creates no nervous tension, and I can play it easily compared to the previous example. Obviously I need to practice the previous passage until there’s no nervous tension whatsoever.

You can expect my next post on Monday, July 30. I hope to have good progress to report.